This article mentions content related to sexual assault and harassment.
Actor and comedian Horatio Sanz has been accused of grooming and sexually assaulting an underage girl.
A lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on Aug. 12 alleges that Sanz groomed an underage fan between April 1999 and May 22, 2002 before sexually assaulting her at an SNL cast party. Sanz was a member of the Saturday Night Live cast from 1998 to 2006 and also portrayed the Mythrol in the pilot episode of Star Wars: The Mandalorian. According to the lawsuit, which names Sanz, SNL and NBC as defendants, the unnamed woman was 17 at the time of the assault and had been groomed by Sanz since they first met when she was 15 and he was 31.
According to the lawsuit, the 15-year old, who was running an SNL fan site at the time, met Sanz in 2000 when he invited her to a taping of the show. Over the next year, Sanz took the girl to after-show parties where she would drink alcohol, "engage in drug use" and he would touch her "inappropriately," the lawsuit states. Sanz invited her to several cast parties, including one party in Sept. 2001, where she allegedly drank with then-SNL-cast member Jimmy Fallon, Sanz and other NBC employees.
In Aug. 2001, Sanz allegedly contacted the then 16-year-old via AOL Instant Messenger, where he offered her tickets to tapings of the sketch comedy show and insider information on upcoming hosts and musical guests. In exchange, Sanz asked her to send him photos of herself performing "sexual acts, including masturbation, which he asked her to describe to him," which led to a cyber-sex relationship between the grown actor and the teenager.
The lawsuit states that "Sanz exchanged messages with [the teen] and steered conversations to discuss sex, sexual experiences, sexual activities, sexual fantasies, masturbation" and that he "admitted and bragged to [her] that he masturbated during these conversations." The lawsuit also states that at a May 2002 party, Sanz allegedly sexually assaulted the young fan, "kissing her, groping her breasts, groping her buttocks, and digitally penetrating her genitals forcibly and without [her] consent," in front of other party-goers who did not intervene.
According to the lawsuit, the experience caused the girl to enter a severe depression where she "regularly self-medicated with dissociative drugs," which continued when she began college in 2003. Sanz allegedly continued to solicit inappropriate photos and messages from her until she was hospitalized in 2005.
In 2019, the girl, now a grown woman, allegedly ran into Sanz at a comedy event where he apologized for his actions, allegedly giving her full permission to "#metoo" him, saying, "[I] swear on a stack of improv books … I'm a different person." The woman, who notes in the lawsuit that she is a victim of child sexual abuse who has experienced "psychological and emotional harm," is seeking unspecified damages.
The case has been brought to the New York's Child Victims Act ("CVA") within a two-year "retroactive revival window" which lifts the statute of limitations on sexual assault/misconduct/harassment "due to the failures and egregious conduct of Defendants NBC and SNL which permitted and enabled Defendant Sanz to groom and ultimately significantly harm" the unnamed woman.
If you are a U.S.-based victim of sexual assault or misconduct in need of help, contact RAINN at 800-656-4673 to be connected with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area. If you are based outside the U.S., click here for a list of international sexual assault resources.
Source: Supreme Court of the State of New York, via Page Six